Eat Candy, Lose Weight: Why Nestle's Kit Kat Promotion = Obesity Exploitation
In a campaign that deserves to win a prize for the worst obesity marketing idea ever, Nestle is offering consumers in the UK a chance to earn free exercise and sporting activities in exchange for the purchase of Nestle products like Kit Kat, Smarties, Nesqik and Cookie Crisp cereal. It's an anti-obesity campaign that encourages you to buy lots of sugary, fattening foods in order to get free vouchers for exercise that will help you lose weight.
I had to check on this one and make sure this wasn't a Chevron-style gag. Sadly it's not. Called "Get Set, Go Free," the campaign lets customers earn points for each package code they enter from 27 different Nestle products. According to the Children's Food Campaign, almost of all these items -- 24 to be exact -- would be categorized as "high in sugar" by the government's Food Standards Agency.
And it's not as if one or two Kit Kat bars gets you a racquetball session or canoe outing. A family of four would need to buy 60 Kit Kats, packs of Smarties or Milky Bars to qualify for canoeing.
Making matters worse, the UK government actually thought this was a good idea. Nestle is doing "Get Set, Go Free" in collaboration with the Dept. of Health and briefly featured the government's Change4Life anti-obesity logo on its web site. But after accusations that the government was allowing food companies to trample its anti-obesity efforts, the logo was removed. The Health Department admits Nestle should not have been given permission to use the Change4Life logo, saying "an error" was made.
You think? One of the key messages of the Change4Life campaign is the idea of a "sugar swap," which encourages consumers to replace sugary foods with those low in sugar or sugar free.
The alliance between the UK government and the world's biggest food company comes as Health Secretary Andrew Lansley killed the budget for the widely-recognized Change4Life campaign. Instead, he asked food companies to step in and help fund and promote the effort. Obesity in the UK is almost as big of a problem as it is here, with 24% of UK adults and 17% of children obese.
Nestle isn't the first food companies to try and win some positive PR from sponsoring healthy eating and anti-obesity messages. In the US, Hershey (HSY) recently teamed up with the American Dietetic Association to promote "Moderation Nation." But at least Hershey had decency not to use the ADA to explicitly boost sales of Twizzlers and Jolly Ranchers.
It's hard to image that the Nestle executives who came up with this cynical and short-sighted campaign to promote some of their least healthy products didn't somehow grasp the irony involved. Perhaps they thought it was funny.